hey, look! my new niece!


welcome, baby girl. just wait 'til you can reach the passenger pegs. you're gonna LOVE motorcycles. (sis: i'm just kidding!)

in other news, richmond is nice. by the time they were done delaying my flight last night and got me out of town, we were several hours off schedule. the plane was mostly full of boy scouts on their way home from philmont scout ranch in cimarron, nm. i have a soft spot for them because almost all of my uncles were boy scouts, rising to the top rank of eagle scout. my grandmother used to look on in amusement when my sisters and i pulled out the scout manuals for guidance on how to tie each other up with clotheslines. she did occasionally comment that the eagle scouts in question would probably be horrified to know that we had learned their secret code language and their special knots.

anyway, the practical implication of a plane full of boy scouts, instead of the usual sunday night road warriors, is that by the time the beverage cart gets back to you in row 28, the only drinks left are diet soda and bloody mary mix. if i'd had any cash on me, i'd have gotten the real thing. as it was, i made do with my virgin bloody mary. probably for the best, since i didn't get to my room until 2 am. if you're going to drink that late at night, you need to drink so much that you don't notice the tiredness. unfortunately, that usually disposes the rent car guy very poorly to handing you any of his precious stock of keys. it's not usually too bad, getting a cab to your hotel, but then you have to get up in the morning and figure out how to get to work.